How Facebook Can Build Your Business – And Why It’s Become Integral

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For businesses, social media is often mistaken as strictly a communication platform. In actuality, social media can be a great tool for your business to not only communicate with customers and leads, but can build relationships with your client base to generate a culture around your business.

And this is possible regardless of whether you sell a product or a service, if you’re B2B or B2C, if you’re in manufacturing, sales, software development, or any other industry, social media can benefit your business.

At its core, an active social media presence for your business allows you to:

• Communicate directly to customers, clients and leads
• Receive invaluable feedback from your customers
• Direct traffic to your website and improve your SEO
• Create and broadcast a brand for your business

Businesses who understand the potential social media offers tend to make one of two major mistakes:

1. They jump on every social media platform available and then are unable to invest enough resources to manage an active presence online.

2. They realize the resources required to manage an active social media presence, so instead do nothing rather than go about it half-way.

Neither of these choices is viable for any company who wants to present itself online as current, relevant and thriving. Instead, consider dedicating resources to a social media platform that will provide the greatest return for your business.

And that platform, unquestionably, is Facebook.

How Facebook Works for Businesses – A Powerhouse with Numbers and Influence

The goal of your business on any social media strategy should be threefold:

1. Become visible online.
2. Connect with your target audience
3. Engage your online community

Visibility

With the largest number of active members of all social media platforms, a Facebook presence is the best way to increase your business’ online visibility. Not only will your business become searchable on Facebook to the vast network of users, but an active Facebook page will increase your business’ visibility in other search engines, like Bing and Google. Often, if your business’ Facebook page maintains an active presence, it will appear above your website on the SERPs. This is a great way for your business to get seen by solid leads, who can then be directed from your Facebook page to your website in order to convert sales.

Connection

Creating relevant, useful content is key to developing a connection with those who visit and (ideally) follow your Facebook page. If providing your audience something that is of value to them is the goal, and you deliver that on a consistent basis, your Facebook page will build trust with and capture the interest of your buyer.

Via the content you create and share, you will be developing and demonstrating your brand, humanizing your business and differentiating yourself from competitors. You should aim for a strong focus on customer service and creating content relevant to your business.

The ability to have this level of personal connection with your customer base is invaluable to a business. As you become a part of your customers’ online community, you generate loyalty and remain top of mind to your existing client base. In turn, this leads to recommendations and return customers time and time again.

Engagement

As you make connections and maintain an active Facebook presence, your goal is to engage with your online community. This begins with receiving Facebook likes and, best of all, Facebook shares, but also extends to receiving customer feedback and getting followed by your target audience.

Engaging with your Facebook customer base will give you the feedback you need to allow you to tailor the products or services your business offers to better suit their wants and needs.

Leveraging Facebook Likes, Insights and Peer Recommendations

There are a few Facebook specific tools businesses should understand when they are developing a robust Facebook strategy:

– Facebook Page vs. Facebook Profile
– Following and Liking
– Peer Recommendations
– Facebook Graph Search
– Facebook Insights

Facebook Business Page v. Facebook Profile: A page is separate from a personal profile and is designed to represent your business. A profile is required in order to create a page, but your profile should be separate from your business’ page. A Facebook Business Page allows you access to marketing features like Facebook Ads and Facebook Insights.

Following and Liking: You want your online community to both Like AND then also Follow your page.

Likes: Those who selected to “Like” your Page.
Follow: Those who may see your posts/updates in their news feed

Liking a business’ Facebook Page tells Facebook that this user likes and may want to see what this business page has to offer. That relationship either grows (at most, a user will see everything that business shares) or declines (the user no longer sees any updates from that business’ page) based on how that user chooses to interact with the page. Having likes improves your visibility, but followers improves your chances of shares and recommendations, and is the key to communicating with and engaging your Facebook community.

Peer Recommendations: 92% of Consumers trust peer recommendations over advertising. Facebook peer recommendations carry a lofty weight. Recently, Facebook improved the way recommendations work. For example, if you are visiting a new city and seeking a car service while you are there, other users can recommend your business and automatically link to your Facebook page.

Facebook Graph Search: Facebook Graph Search functions similarly to other search engines. This search feature within Facebook searches using relevant keywords and location primarily, but provides an added level of refinement by utilizing your community to provide more personalized and targeted results.

Facebook Page Insights: To understand how well your Facebook page is performing, businesses utilize Facebook Page Insights. This information provides your business data on everything from the demographics of your followers to how people are choosing to engage with your Page.

Developing a Facebook Strategy for Your Business – Help from EmoryDay

Want to get the greatest return from your business’ Facebook Page? Contact the online marketing professionals at EmoryDay. When you partner with us, you gain access to an entire team of marketing experts, including social media strategists who can help you create and maintain an active Facebook community. Contact us for a free consultation.

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  • 2.
    FREE Custom Marketing Plan
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  • 3.
    Select only the services you want.